


Tchotchke

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)
Genre: milly is slowly healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24697270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: Months after Eric's disappearance, Milly is given a surprising memento from his uncle.
Relationships: Eric Gibb/Milly Michaelson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Tchotchke

Milly was walking home from the park one Saturday when she saw Uncle Hugo sitting on his front stoop with a cup of coffee. He often sat outside these days. She figured it was better than staying cooped up indoors—plus, it was easier to keep an eye on him, make sure he wasn’t drinking. Both she and Louis (and her mother, when she was home), tried to check on him every once in a while. Ever since Eric left, he was all alone, and Milly knew how badly that felt.

Geneva had telephoned, asking Milly if she wanted to hang out at the park, earlier that day. She said yes, though part of her wanted just to stay home and sleep until sundown. School was running her ragged; she was making an earnest attempt to improve her grades, now, and that meant making up a serious amount of late assignments, writing an endless supply of notes for all her classes in order to retake failed tests, and catching up on Mrs. Sherman’s essays, three of which she hadn’t turned in at all. In other words, Milly was exhausted. 

All this work came with one positive, though—she was getting pretty good at using her mom’s word processor.

The sun was beginning to set when Milly started walking home. She’d dug out her old soccer ball from a box in the garage, and now carried it tucked in her armpit. She hadn’t played soccer since junior high, when she was on a team with Amy and Esther, her old friends from Hebrew school. She’d never been very good at it, but she was better than Geneva, who preferred to talk while Milly practiced dribbling.

Milly raised her hand in a wave as she passed Eric’s uncle, who, to her surprise, put down his coffee mug, stood up, and waved her over. She paused, then walked up to him. “Hi, Mr. Gibb,” she said, a little uncertain. She hadn’t had much contact with him since Eric left, though her mother had actually gone over and helped him clean a couple weekends ago.

“Hello, Milly,” he replied, not looking at her. Like his nephew, he wasn’t big on eye contact. “I was wondering…” He paused, clearing his throat. “Your mother told me you’ve been, uh...struggling, a bit. With Eric going away,” he added, after a minute.

Milly reddened. She didn’t know her mother had been talking about her with Uncle Hugo.

“Come in a minute.” He rose to his full, lanky height and walked to the door, holding it open for her. Milly entered, feeling a heaviness surface in her chest. She hadn’t been to the Gibbs’ home since the stormy night she helped Eric out of the straitjacket, since they fell asleep in each other’s arms. The house wasn’t as closed up anymore—the window above the kitchen sink was open, letting sunlight flood into the room. The counter was clean, the hardwood floor looked freshly vacuumed. The only beer bottle she saw was on the floor next to the overstuffed armchair sitting in front of the television. Her mother had told her that Uncle Hugo was trying to cut back. 

“Wait here,” he ordered gruffly, and began walking upstairs. Milly sat in the living room, marveling at how much nicer it was, now. The atmosphere was no longer suffocating. When she took a peek in the fridge, she saw a block of cheddar cheese wrapped in plastic, a pack of hot dogs, ground beef, lettuce and tomatoes in the crisper—actual food, not just the frozen meals. She felt a twinge of bitterness. Why couldn’t Eric’s uncle have gotten his act together while Eric was still there? It just wasn’t fair. 

She heard the thumping of Uncle Hugo coming down the stairs; quickly, she closed the fridge and retreated to the living room, feeling guilty for snooping. Before, Uncle Hugo had seemed so checked out that it didn’t seem to matter whether she snooped or not—but things were different now. Now, she actually had to maintain some sense of decorum, especially since she didn’t know him that well.

Uncle Hugo returned carrying something in his arms. “When I was driving Eric to the institute for the last time,” he said, voice heavy, “I took this from him and put it in the passenger seat. He couldn’t keep playing with it anyway, since he was strapped to the backseat.” His voice broke, but he kept going, staring down at the thing he was holding. “I figured he’d want you to have it. I know he loved you.”

Milly blushed. “Mr. Gibb—”

“No, no,” he said roughly, “don’t try to deny it. He kept Polaroids of you up on his bedroom wall and in the attic. He’s never done that for anybody else. _Anybody_."

Milly fell silent, remembering taking photos at the park one chilly day with an old Polaroid camera they found at Eric’s house. She’d taught him to use it, and he’d snapped some pictures, often with his thumb in the foreground. She’d posed for them, intentionally goofy, and eventually he got the gist, concentrating as the camera flashed. She’d taken some of Eric as he fiddled with the kite, which had become a constant fixture of their occasional park ventures. She had one of them in her room, in a drawer in her desk. In it, he was smiling, looking at the kite, spreading his arms up into the air as if to let it fly of its own accord. 

She hadn’t realized Eric had kept the photos of her just as she kept the photos of him. She’d forgotten all about it.

Uncle Hugo held out the memento at last. Milly recognized it immediately; it was a small keychain with a plastic airplane at the end of it. She’d bought the tchotchke for him while shopping with her mother one weekend. She’d wanted to clip it to his house key, which he kept on a twine necklace he wore around his neck, but instead he liked to jingle it and watch the plastic airplane as it waved. The keychain led to a lot of lunch periods full of jingling, to the point where Milly almost regretted buying it for him, but now she felt a burst of pleasure upon seeing it again. Pleasure and sorrow. Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked them away. _You’re not going to cry in front of Eric’s uncle,_ she told herself firmly. Lately, after three months of feeling blocked up, crying had come more easily. She didn’t know why. Her mother was likely to attribute it to her weekly sessions with the school guidance counselor, but she wasn’t so sure.

Uncle Hugo was looking at her with the eyes of a sad basset hound. She took the keychain in her hands, cradling the plastic airplane as if it were something precious—which, she supposed, it was. “Thank you,” she said, and cleared her throat. _Now he’s got me doing it_.

“You’re welcome—”

“But you should have it,” she said, offering it back to him. “There’s nothing left in his bedroom anymore. You don’t have anything to remember him by. I have—” She caught herself before she mentioned the ring. She figured Eric’s uncle might not feel so accepting if she told him his nephew had given his sister-in-law’s wedding ring to someone he’d known for little more than two months. “I mean, I have things he made for me. Paper airplanes and stuff. But...I don’t know if he made things for you.” She flushed at the last part, unsure if she was speaking out of turn. Surely it wasn’t news to him that Eric had been cold toward him, but still, it made her feel guilty to say it out loud.

Hugo shook his head. “No,” he said simply, eyes morose. “You deserve this much more than I do. Please.”

He closed her fingers around the keychain. The metal chain was cold in her hands, but the airplane was smooth. It was a red-and-white, cheap-looking plastic thing with the paint already chipping from months or years in the twenty-five cent bin at the grocery store. Milly looked at it, remembering how much Eric loved the stupid little thing. She could imagine him fiddling with it as he and Uncle Hugo took those first fateful steps to the car. A lump came into her throat. It was probably the last thing he touched before he became institutionalized—the last thing he touched that he loved. Before he escaped, before he weathered the storm to fly home, straitjacket flapping in the icy, wet wind. She remembered the wild look in his eyes when she found him there in the attic, how scared he was. It was like all his fears had come true and he’d somehow fallen out the other side, bedraggled and traumatized but _out_. That mix of exhilaration and horror flicked across his face as Milly took off the straitjacket. Then, as he realized that she was there, that she was with him at last, that she hadn’t abandoned him...that all that faded into a look of relief and warm, dreamy affection. _Love,_ she thought, remembering how he stroked her cheek, ever so gently, with the back of his hand. That was the expression on his face. It was a look of love.

“Don’t cry,” said Uncle Hugo. Milly sniffled, suddenly realizing where she was. When she touched her cheek, she felt a tear track. He awkwardly offered her a checked handkerchief from his pocket. She took it, hoping it was clean, and wiped her damp cheeks. “Come on,” said Uncle Hugo, surprisingly gentle. “I’ll make you some hot chocolate.” 

The hot chocolate was made with water, not milk, which Milly figured was probably some sort of blasphemy. Still, she appreciated the effort. “Thank you, Mr. Gibb,” she said after she finished. When she tried to wash out her mug, he plucked it from her grasp and turned the kitchen faucet on himself.

“Go on,” he said. “I’ll do this.” He smiled briefly. She smiled back.

Milly left the Gibb house feeling strangely comforted. Upon getting to her bedroom, she put the airplane keychain in her desk drawer and took out the picture she’d taken of Eric in the park. Her heart clenched a little, but she took a deep breath and taped it to the upper left corner of her vanity mirror, the same way she used to put pictures of Amy and Esther on her wall. 

_When he comes back,_ she thought, looking at the mirror, _he’ll see it right away_. 

The thought made her smile. 


End file.
